


ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Gen, crossing the streams a little
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 17:03:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2199843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's a little perplexed why nobody's challenging him. Nobody else is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Steve thought the Ice Bucket Challenge was a nice idea, no matter how far it had strayed from its roots. He wished there was a little bit more awareness-raising in the fund-raising, but the money wouldn't hurt if it went toward research or palliative care for the disease's sufferers.

He remembered Lou Gehrig very well, of course. He'd rooted against the Yankees his entire life and Gehrig's mastery of the game had been a big reason why his dreams of Yankee failure had oft gone unfulfilled. But he'd never wished the man himself harm and he'd been struck the same as everyone else when Gehrig had suddenly retired and, seemingly just as suddenly, died. It had shaken the city, no matter which team you'd rooted for, at a time when everything else was already tainted by the unease of a world at war. Steve had been a couple of weeks shy of twenty-three, finally having grown out of his frail youth into an adulthood that was promising to be far less precarious, and he remembered thinking that a couple of years previous, out of the two of them, the Iron Horse and scrawny Steve Rogers, the oddsmakers would not have accepted bets on who'd have survived longer.

In 2014, he'd be more than happy to help shine the spotlight on ALS, but he was running into some difficulty: nobody wanted to challenge him.

"You spent seventy years in ice," Bruce said as they watched Tony brainstorm for his response. "Nobody wants to throw that in your face. Or over your head, as the case may be."

Tony had been challenged by an actress -- a former fling; Pepper had simply rolled her eyes -- and, being Tony, he'd coughed up a donation and forfeited on the time limit so he could plan something spectacular. Which ended up being a giant swimming pool made of ice put up in the Little San Bernadino Mountains, complete with ice water slide and ice pool toys. He'd turned it into a fundraiser -- for $50,000, you could go swimming and enjoy a fancy dinner -- and drawn Hollywood glitterati as well as his tech sector neighbors from Atherton. Thor was going, but the rest of them were staying far away.

"That seems a little... overprotective," Steve replied, boggling a little. "It's not like I remember being frozen."

On the not-inconsiderable list of things that woke him up in the middle of the night, being frozen wasn't one of them. He'd been knocked out in the crash, suffering a skull fracture serious enough for evidence of it to remain when they'd defrosted him in 2011 and what would have been a traumatic brain injury had he been rescued immediately. There were no memories to haunt him. Bucky's fall, on the other hand, or Doctor Erskine's murder, or any of a hundred battlefield scenes, or anything to do with the Winter Soldier, that was a different story. But ice, in any manifestation, wasn't going to make him upset.

"We live in a time when hurting feelings counts as much as hurting bones and flesh," Bruce said and shrugged, leaning back on the couch so he could reach his yerba mate drink. Steve had tried the stuff once and while he'd appreciated the ritual of it -- the tea-strainer silver straw, the gourd cup -- he didn't particularly like the taste.

"What do you think of ice cube loungers?" Tony called over.

"Hard, uncomfortable, and an invitation to frostbite for people in bathing suits," Steve called back.

The fundraiser, when it happened, was a great success, with millions of dollars raised, and Thor earning plenty of new fans once the photos of him reclining on a well-padded ice lounge chair hit the internet. At the conclusion Tony challenged Colonel Rhodes, who'd specifically told him not to, a couple of Hollywood types, and the President.

Steve didn't go out of his way to follow the progress of the challenge, looking at the video clips his friends sent him but not searching them out himself. (Sam had an elaborate rating system and only passed on the ones that had a high degree of creativity and a decent chance of actual physical discomfort.) But Bruce's explanation seemed to hold and while every athlete and actor and public figure seemed to be a part of it, Steve remained untouched and, apparently, off-limits.

"I feel like I'm eleven again, the last kid picked for stickball," he told Clint, who'd patted him on the shoulder and offered to hold his head under the ice-water dispenser in the fridge.

In the end, however, a fridge-door swirlie wasn't required. Steve came back to New York after a mostly-boring-but-ultimately-fruitful HYDRA hunt in Boston to a video clip JARVIS had been instructed to play upon his return. The speaker was a cable "news" chat show host known for obnoxiousness he pretended was righteousness, a hypocrite whose outrage was entirely real even if it fell apart under close logical scrutiny. He'd been a thorn in the Avengers' side since the Battle of New York, but Steve had long been his favorite target -- even over Tony, which bothered Tony immensely. The guy prided himself on his unwillingness to "pray to the altar of Captain America," which tended to manifest itself as rants that either distorted history or cast aspersions on Steve's character and motives. Steve found it hurtful, sometimes deeply so, but had always refused all offers to fight back in defense of his honor and quality.

The video was from the show's set and featured the host sitting in a kiddie pool full of ice on stage.

"You know, there's been one conspicuous absence in this very literal deluge of support for ALS research. We're down to D-list celebrities, minor league ballplayers, and the local PTA board, but we haven't seen the one man medical research _did_ save from a life of hardship. CAPTAIN AMERICA. Where is Steve Rogers in all this? The guy's face hasn't been off the newsstand since the Battle of New York and _somehow_ , while we're calling out every single member of The Goonies and The Hillsdale Singers, we're, what, giving him a pass because nobody wants to mention the I-C-E in case he starts to cry? Screw that! Steve Rogers, I am challenging _you_."

The video was three days old. JARVIS informed him, and his defaulting -- indeed his lack of reaction at all -- had caused some comment. Mamadou the Avengers PR Flack had responded to queries by saying that Captain America was currently unavailable because he was working, but that hadn't really helped much. His challenger had milked it for a five-minute monologue on Steve's hiding behind a manufactured mission before dovetailing into a screed about SHIELD and the Senate Minority Leader's suggestion that it survive instead of being completely eliminated.

"Congrats?" Bruce offered wryly the next day over lunch.

"I think we can come up with something suitably outrageous to get Bullshit Bob to shut his mouth," Tony mused, tapping the beat of his thoughts against the plate with the cherry tomato currently on his fork.

"I already know what I want to do," Steve answered, trying to sound confident and not like he might be in fear of whatever Tony came up with, especially after spending the morning teaching Bruce about Katy Perry. "I've had time to think about it."

Steve first emailed Mamadou with a short statement for publication saying that he had indeed defaulted and would make the appropriate donations to the ALS Association and, because of personal connection, the USO. He would also be completing the challenge belatedly once it could be arranged.

He then contacted Major Velez at the Pentagon's PR department. "I wanted to see what I'd have to do to borrow a plane..."

The actual organization of the event took more than a week. The thanks of a grateful nation could be extended to the Department of Defense going along with Steve's occasional bouts of whimsy and, once he told them what he had in mind, they made everything happen with an alacrity that would have surprised anyone in uniform. It was patterned on the already-existing Operation Toy Drop, which helped. The plan was simple: for a $10 donation, any military personnel (US and allied nations) with airborne qualification could jump out of a perfectly good aircraft over the already-nippy North Atlantic with Captain America. The response was overwhelming.

After handshakes and photographs, including a giant group shot, and some interviews, Steve boarded his plane and took his seat. When the time came, he stepped into the slipstream wearing a parachute (he'd promised Natasha), a video camera to record the experience, and the dogtags he'd had made for the exercise that featured the name of a young ALS patient he'd met, the sister of a marine who couldn't participate but had wanted to honor her sibling. Once everyone had been fished out of the drink, there were more photos and interviews and a barbecue on the flat-top that would sail them back to port. Steve was asked more than once who he was going to challenge in his turn, but he demurred, instead suggesting that everyone take it as a challenge to help others in need even when it wasn't a dare.

Bullshit Bob opened his next show with a monologue wondering how many millions of Defense dollars Captain America had wasted when all he'd needed to do was dump one of Tony Stark's champagne buckets over his head and call it a day.

* * *

If you'd like to consider a donation: 

[ALS Association](http://www.alsa.org/fight-als/ice-bucket-challenge.html)

[USO](http://www.uso.org/)

**Author's Note:**

> I spend a lot of time on [Tumblr](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/) now, if you're into that sort of thing.
> 
> If it's yours, too, you can reblog [this story's post](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/95759715509/captain-america-avengers-als-ice-bucket-challenge) if you'd like.


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